‘Sickness and death are not punishments from God’ : Pastor Kabs Kanu

The Co-Pastor of the Covenant Child World Evangelistic Ministry of New Jersey , Rev. Leeroy Wilfred Kabs-Kanu, last Saturday preached the keynote Christian sermon at a Prayer Service held in Somerset for Community Leader , Mr. Mohamed Aziz Nabe. The program was staged by an organization called THE FRIENDS OF AZIZ NABE with the expressed purpose to pray for God’s intervention on behalf of Aziz Nabe who has been ailing for sometime now. The service was held at the Corona Club on Somerset Street, Franklin Township, New Jersey .

FODAY MANSARAY TELLS THE CROWD HOW NABE HAS STOOD FOR HIM IN LIFE

A sizeable and impressive crowd including an array of muslim and christian leaders, All People’s Congress (APC) officials from other states, activists across a broad spectrum of Sierra Leone’s political parties, distinguished personalities and family members attended the emotional service. Many of them took the floor to narrate the good deeds of Mr. Mohamed Aziz Nabe and ways he had affected their lives in a positive fashion.They also prayed for God’s healing touch on Mr. Nabe in a moving program that saw some of the speakers, including two religious leaders , broke down on the pulpit and weep bitterly during their presentation.

MR. AZIZ NABE ( SECOND FROM RIGHT ) LISTENS CAREFULLY AS SPEAKER AFTER SPEAKER SYMPATHIZE WITH HIM AND PRAISE HIS GOOD WORKS

Among the Organizers in attendance of the prayer service for Nabe included Messrs Foday Mansaray ,Dr Wilfred Bankole Gibson, Mr. Abdul Sesay and Alhaji Ibrahim Sei from Boston and Mr Dauda Sheku Bangura who was the Moderator of the multi denomination prayer service. Other organizers who could not make it, but played a great role in molding the idea and successfully bringing it to fruition today was Mr Mohamed Sowe (NC) and Lawyer Sorie Tarawally along with the man who made the first phone call to Alhaji Ibrahim Sei . Others key supporters of the idea who could not make because of prior engagements were Mr. Unisa Kanu, Madam Yabom Sesay, Mr. Mohamed Lamin Fofanah and so many other friends around the world whom we can name right now

Delivery his sermon, taken from Genesis 2 : 16-17 , Ecclesiastes 9 and Isaiah 53 : 3- 12, Rev. Kabs-Kanu said that he had observed two tendencies in some Sierra Leoneans which are quite wrong . They blame God for their own misfortunes like sickness and death : secondly, they provoke their enemies that their sicknesses or death are punishments from God. He described such attitudes as very unfair to God and inhuman to the victims because God does not punish anybody with death or sickness. The Pastor preached further that in this new dispensation of Grace which followed the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross of Calvary, God does not put sicknesses and death on people. God is very good God who wants his people to prosper and live in good health ” .( 3 John 2 ). God was not even the actual originator of death and sickness, the minister taught . Rev. Kabs Kanu preached that death and sickness came to the world through the disobedience of man at the Garden of Eden.

Delivery his sermon, taken from Genesis 2 : 16-17 , Ecclesiastes 9 and Isaiah 53 : 3- 12, Rev. Kabs-Kanu said that he had observed two tendencies in some Sierra Leoneans which are quite wrong . They blame God for their own misfortunes like sickness and death : secondly, they provoke their enemies that their sicknesses or death are punishments from God. He described such attitudes as very unfair to God and inhuman to the victims because God does not punish anybody with death or sickness. The Pastor preached further that in this new dispensation of Grace which followed the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross of Calvary, God does not put sicknesses and death on people. God is a very good God who wants his people to prosper and live in good health ” .( 3 John 2 ). God was not even the actual originator of death and sickness, the minister taught . Rev. Kabs Kanu preached that death and sickness came to the world through the disobedience of man at the Garden of Eden.

MR. NABE AND HIS WIFE ALIMA LISTENING TO THE STATEMENTS OF LOVE AND SUPPORT

When God made the world, he created a very healthy man who was supposed to have lived forever .He was not supposed to have been sick or troubled by difficulties. God gave Man power and dominion over all the creatures and his circumstances. God told man to go out and subdue the earth and multiply. But God gave a specific and important instruction to man that he could eat of every tree in the Garden of Eden, but he warned man strongly “….of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shall not eat of it ; for in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die “( Genesis 2 : 16 -17 ).Rev. Kabs Kanu said man disobeyed God and ate the fruit and as a result sin, death, sickness and tribulations came on the earth. ”Sickness and death would never had come on this earth if man had not disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden. ” He also said that God is so good and loves man so much that decided to find a remedy . God, he preached, came down to earth in the likeness of man and died a horrible death on the Cross of Calvary to take away man’s sin . He taught that healing was also in the same atonement on the Cross of Calvary. He noted that because of the atonement by Jesus Christ on the Cross, God looks at Man through the precious blood that Jesus shed on the Cross and through Christ’s sacrifice, God has healed us from our sicknesses . Using Isaiah Chapter 53, Rev. Kanu said that Jesus Christ …” was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.”

A COMPOSITE VIEW OF THE CROWD

Rev. Kabs Kanu pointed out that our sickness at the moment also come from environmental forces, genetic factors, our life choices and at times being at the wrong place at the wrong time. But all these extraneous circumstances were set in motion by the fall of man at the Garden. If the nature of God had not left man to be replaced by the nature of the Devil , these circumstances would not have affected man. He would have remained master over environmental, genetic and all other factors that presently cause sickness or death if he had retained the nature of God with which he was created.

ANOTHER COMPOSITE VIEW OF THE CROWD

Pastor Kabs-Kanu advised strongly against laughing at people for their sicknesses or death. He said that it was ungodly and un-Sierra Leonean and that , according to the Bible (Ecclesiastes 9: 2 ) , misfortunes befall people at random . It does not pick and choose between victims. The passage says that : “All things come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous, and to the wicked; to the good and to the clean, and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth , and to him that sacrificeth not: as is the good, so is the sinner ” . The same Book states : ”11 I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift,nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. 12 For man also knoweth not his time: as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them.”

The Pastor said that if people had deserved their sicknesses , Mohamed Aziz Nabe would not have been sick, because he is a good and caring man . “Though we once had a misunderstanding through politics, Nabe is a mentor and a relative of my wife’s and my impression of him has not changed . He is a good man, ” Rev. Kanu added. He called on the community to mobilize themselves behind Mr. Nabe at his time of need and to support him in his sickness. He said this is the time for those who claim to love Nabe to demonstrate it by standing by him and providing moral and financial support. He also described Aziz Nabe as a man of faith and admonished people to pray for God to honour Mr. Nabe’s faith by healing him. Pastor Kabs-Kanu said that God is a miracle-working God and he was sure that God would perform a miracle and heal Mr. Nabe.

Pastor Alusine Lovell from Philadelphia gave the final christian prayers. He prayed for the speedy recovery of Mr. Aziz Nabe and he asked all present to also pray for President Ernest Koroma and family who are engulfed in mourning after the death last week of the President’s mother, Madam Alice Florence Kamara. Pastor Lovell was accompanied to New Jersey by Mr. Samuel Dillito Turay and Mrs. Mamusu Conteh-Luke.

MANY OTHER SPEAKERS TOOK THE FLOOR BUT THIS STORY CANNOT BE COVERED IN ONE ARTICLE. WE WILL BRING YOU THE COMMENTS OF THE OTHER MEN OF GOD AND COMMUNITY LEADERS IN DIFFERENT ARTICLES.

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